Google to Wipe Illegal Child Content From the Web with Huge New Database

Within a year, Google plans to have a new image-sharing database up and running that will remove illegal images of children from the internet—and the company is getting help from many organizations to do so. Teaming up with other websites, groups (like the Internet Watch Foundation), charities, and law enforcement agencies, Google is collecting a wide database of content depicting the abuse of children, which will help them clear the submitted content from the web.

"We are creating an industry-wide global database of ‘hashed’ images to help all technology companies find these images, wherever they might be," saidGoogle spokesperson Scott Rubin. "They will then be blocked and reported."

Images and other content that have been flagged as being illegal are difficult to wipe from the internet because of the lack of a web-standard database. With this new program from Google, it should help websites and other organizations more efficiently, and swiftly, take these images down.